Earl Spencer claims Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's treatment echoes what happened to Diana

Earl Spencer said the treatment of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex bears "echoes" of what his sister, Diana, Princess of Wales , experienced.

In a BBC interview set to air this evening, the earl described the coverage of Harry and Meghan as having a "cancerous influence", adding it would be "beholden on people to learn from Diana's example".

He said his sister was "really brought low" by "criticism" she received from the media, and that it was a "pity" to see "echoes of that" in the coverage of Harry and Meghan.

"If you look at an article in a tabloid about Diana or the couple that you were mentioning, Harry and Meghan, you know, they can be really, really unpleasant," he said. "And I think it would be really beholden on people to learn from Diana's example.

"I'm not here to speak for Harry and Meghan, but for anyone who's being destroyed in this way daily, it must be such a cancerous influence in their life," the earl added.

The Sussexes, who returned to the UK from the US on August 26, have repeatedly criticised the media's treatment of them since stepping back from royal duties in 2020. Harry told Oprah Winfrey in 2021 that the tabloid press had created a "toxic environment".

The latest remarks from Earl Spencer follow bombshell claims about what King Charles allegedly said after Diana's death, with the Earl accusing his brother-in-law of gaslighting him over Buckingham Palace 's response. The alleged comment from Charles was "we'll forget her soon enough".

The earl has made a series of damning claims about the King in a new memoir chronicling Diana's life that prompted the palace to push back, saying "the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason".

He accused the King of gaslighting him and called the response a "rather poor imitation of the 'recollections may vary' quote" – the late Queen's response to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's allegations in their Oprah Winfrey interview, The Mail on Sunday reports.

He said: "It is not every day you wake up to find you've been gaslit by the King. It was astonishingly provocative and below the belt because it was essentially trying to say I'd lied without the King being able to deny what I'd said.

"I also thought it was a rather poor imitation of the 'recollections may vary' quote, which was a much more elegant way of putting things, but in these circumstances entirely out of place."

In response to the claims made in the memoir, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said on Wednesday: "While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss."

The earl insisted he is "telling the truth" over what he described as "monstrous" comments about his sister by the King.

Speaking about an alleged row over Diana's funeral arrangements involving her sons, the earl said: "(The King) went ballistic, would be the right term, and started really going for my family as a whole, about their sense of duty, not being adequate enough, and ranted for a while, I have no idea how long, but it was a significant period, and I just listened.